User:Brianjd/Spoiler (media)

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I believe that spoilers without spoiler warnings are unacceptable and cannot see the slightest problem with the warnings, except for a negligible space/bandwidth/etc. cost.

I came back to Wikipedia after a while to read the Bee Movie article, and was disappointed to see a spoiler with no warning, and even more disappointed to see that {{spoiler}} was deleted. I have happily used {{spoiler}} in the past and cannot understand any of the arguments against it.

Contents

[edit] Use of {{spoiler}}

[edit] Changing use of {{spoiler}}

[edit] Changes between revisions of MiszaBot's page

MiszaBot maintains a list of pages using spoiler templates. I don't know which templates MiszaBot is actually tracking (I just assumed initially that it was only {{spoiler}}).

The following list contains all changes between revisions 180879205 [2007-12-29T23:15:16 (GMT)] and 185148015 [2008-01-18T05:15:24 (GMT)]. All times are in GMT.

[edit] Pages edited by me

Now that {{spoiler}} has been deleted, references to it should be removed. For this reason, and this reason alone, I have removed {{spoiler}} from the following pages/sections of pages:

On the talk pages, it was being used a spoiler warning for the discussion. The talk page for The Amazing Race also has a section on spoilers.

[edit] Current use of {{spoiler}}

{{spoiler}} is used on the following non-talk pages (list is incomplete):

It is linked to from the following non-talk pages (list is incomplete):

[edit] Discussions

I have contributed to the following discussions:

[edit] Arguments for and against spoiler warnings and {{spoiler}}

Here are the arguments, followed by my responses:

[edit] Arguments for and against spoiler warnings

[edit] For

  1. They assist people to avoid spoilers, which most people want to.
  2. If reliable sources have used a warning, so should we, in the same way as if reliable sources have included the plot, then so should we (NPOV).

[edit] Against

  1. Aesthetics (is that spelt correctly?)
    1. Spoiler warnings that are only visible to users who choose to see them are better than no warnings.
  2. They are "unencyclopedic".
    1. I agree that this is rather like a medieval shipwright calling metal ships "unshiplike" (see below).
  3. There is a lack of consensus on when they should be used.
    1. Surely there are some articles where there is a consensus.

[edit] Arguments for and against {{spoiler}}

[edit] For

  1. It provides a standard spoiler warning.

[edit] Against

  1. It's unused (for the reasons above?).
    1. Apparently, a small group of users have been removing them all faster than a large number of users have been adding them. "It's far easier to remove tags than add them." [PyTom (talk)]
  2. It's better to use {{current fiction}}.
    1. This has also been deleted.
    2. Why should warnings be restricted to recent releases?
    3. What is "current" anyway (see below)?

[edit] "Unencyclopedic"?

'Unencyclopedic' is a just a coded way of saying 'I don't like it'. The claim, offered by the anti-spoiler people, that encyclopedias don't have spoiler warnings, is unsupported by any known definition of encyclopedia, and seems to just have been made up by them. It's rather like a medieval shipwright insisting that all ships must be made of wood, and a metal ship is fundamentally 'unshiplike'. The reason (most) other encyclopedias don't have them is technical limitations or niche audiences.

—Nydas(Talk) 11:04, 8 November 2007 (UTC), Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2007 November 8#Template:Spoiler

According to WP:UNENCYCLOPEDIC, "... is so vague, it gives no information on why the article should be deleted." (Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions) Therefore, I recommend that your vote be appropriately discounted by the closer.

—Milo 11:47, 9 November 2007 (UTC), Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2007 November 8#Template:Spoiler

[edit] "Current"?

The film Rescue Dawn premiered September 9, 2006 at the Toronto Film Festival.[1] Its first wide release was July 27, 2007 in the United States. It won't be released in Russia until February 21, 2008.

—Pixelface 20:38, 8 November 2007 (UTC), Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2007 November 8#Template:Spoiler

[edit] See also